This week's Wednesday

Wednesday is my day off from retail work, which makes it my designated day to try to get around to doing whatever needs doing. I always run out of Wednesday before I run out of Wednesday things to do.

We'll use THE OLD WAYS! After a string of Wednesday posts extolling the virtue of shifting the weekly recording of This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl from its familiar Wednesday prep time to doing it during a break at work on Tuesdays, a busy Monday evening meant programming the playlist needed to be done on Tuesday night, pushing the recording back to Wednesday. The old ways!! 

(And well worth the switch, as Monday night's business was an in-person author event alongside Dave Murray, which found us appearing on behalf of our work--Dave's superb novel A Breath Of Fresh Air [A Transplant Tale] and my books Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones and The Greatest Record Ever Made! [Volume 1]--before an engaged, inquisitive, perhaps even appreciative audience at the Northern Onondaga County Library's North Syracuse branch. Told some stories! Sold some books! We definitely need to do more NOPL appearances.)

On this week's Wednesday, I got up at 7:30, grabbed my morning mug, did the weekly online bankin' and bill-payin', showered, and then accompanied Brenda to a lovely breakfast at Brewer Union Cafe in Brewerton. My first visit to Brewer Union, Brenda's second, and we will most definitely be going back there again: Great food, personable service, and MORE COFFEE! Life is good. After breakfast, we had full-on grocery shopping needs to address, and address 'em we did. We stopped back home to stash our various fresh supplies of tortilla chips and Mexican Coca-Cola, then headed out again for the rest of the day's out-of-the-house errands (including the acquisition of new comic books--the latest issues of Ancestral Recall, Batman Superman World's Finest, Spider-Man: Torn, and Wonder Woman--at Comix Zone). With all outside responsibilities dispatched, I got around to starting the radio show around 3:30 or so.

The specific show at hand was The 27th Annual THIS IS ROCK 'N' ROLL RADIO Christmas Show. Tuesday night's programming session with Dana resulted in a killer set o' Yuletunes, including most (though not all) of our seasonal TIRnRR perennials, 2025 holiday offerings by Blaine Campbell and the California Sound, the Krayolas, and Perilous, and a few scattered favorites that make it into some of our Christmas shows and are omitted from others, the whole mistletoe mess built around our yearly commitment to play each 'n' every one of the Beatles' annual Christmas messages. We never have time to play anywhere near as many of the Christmas tracks we wish we could play, but I'm satisfied that this year's show hits its target like a snowball tossed with flying-reindeer accuracy. We even select another Christmas candidate as this week's Greatest Record Ever Made! You can find out all about it on Sunday night.

With the show completed, I had some chili for supper and watched some TV game shows with Brenda (deliberately avoiding subjecting ourselves to whatever fresh hell our odious, bloviating national embarrassment may have been ranting about in prime time as his meds did or didn’t kick in). After Brenda retired for the evening, I received an email from TIRnRR's intrepid stats man Fritz Van Leaven. The totals have been tallied, the tallies have been duly totaled--like, totally totaled--and we have the information to start work on our December 28th show: THE COUNTDOWN! Thanks once again to Fritz for enabling us to end each year with what I regard as our best show of the year. I have seen the Countdown, and it is good.

Next Wednesday is Christmas Eve. I will probably record the Countdown show over this weekend, freeing up next week's Wednesday for whatever other dashing through the snow Christmas Eve day will require. On, Dancer! On, other Dancers! On, ALL you Dancers! The music ain't just sittin' here to rack up naughty or nice points, ya know. Deck the halls, and hit the floor. In the words of my all-time favorite Christmas track: It's about that time.

If you like what you see here on Boppin' (Like The Hip Folks Do), please consider a visit to CC's Tip Jar. You can also become a Boppin' booster on my Patreon page.

I compiled a various-artists tribute album called Make Something Happen! A Tribute To The Flashcubes, and it's pretty damned good; you can read about it here and order it here. My new book The Greatest Record Ever Made! (Volume 1) is now available, and you can order an autographed copy here. You can still get my previous book Gabba Gabba Hey! A Conversation With The Ramones from publisher Rare Bird Books, OR an autographed copy here. If you like the books, please consider leaving a rating and/or review at the usual online resources.

This Is Rock 'n' Roll Radio with Dana & Carl airs Sunday nights from 9 to Midnight Eastern, on the air in Syracuse at SPARK! WSPJ 103.3 and 93.7 FM, streaming at SPARK stream and on the Radio Garden app as WESTCOTT RADIO. You can read about our history here